This blog will post detailed news items about GLBT issues. Some of the issues include the "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and gay marriage. Please note that my main website is DOASKDOTELL.COM (link on my Profile).

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About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Monday, December 30, 2013

Justice Antonni Scalia’s “worst fears” (expressed in his
dissent in Lawrence v. Texas) that invalidating the Texas homosexual-only sodomy
law in 2003 under due process or equal protection arguments would eventually compel
governments to recognize gay marriage seem to be coming true, according to a
Washington Post article Sunday by Robert Barnes, link here.

The comments on the article are interesting, especially one
from “Blu-Dog Ex-Dem” who asks bluntly, “Do other people’s family relationships
affect you? This has been studied and the answer is, of course. Why pretend
otherwise?” Some of what gets said here
sounds irrelevant, but then the person notes that when one’s sibling has a child,
the probability that person will have a child within two years increases.

Another distant story today on CNN reports “LGBT in Uganda, seeking
acceptance from family, homeland” notes the horror of the passage of the
vitriolic bill, and the deliberate outing of gays by tabloids. An Anglican
Bishop there is quoted as saying, “We love gay people … we want them to repent.”
Ordinary Ugandans are depicted as believing that homosexuality is a plot of
colonialists to control the country.

All of this points out a particular line of thought. Many men see the complementarity demanded by
longterm heterosexual marriage as challenging.
But they may be more likely to feel up to it if they think everyone else
does. To say that you love people enough
to demand that they repent is to say that you need to see a particular standard
of righteousness from others, so you can do yourself what you know is
difficult. That’s how I would answer
Blu-Dog’s remark (although I haven’t logged on to the Post to do so yet; I
hardly have time).

I spent a summer in 1970 in Indianapolis on my first job (with RCA), and found the culture rather insular and provincial then, Yet, the company then called it a "nice place" until it pulled out of manufacturing televisions there.

Picture: near the site of the RCA plant on Meridian St, Indianapolis (2012).

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Utah’s sudden development on gay marriage may be the biggest
domino to fall, in getting other conservative states to follow, according to a “liberal”
Washington Post story Christmas Eve by Niraj Chokshi and Carol Morello, link
here.

The federal judge (Robert Shelby) refused to delay his own
ruling, and the 10th Circuit also refused a stay, so gay marriages
in Salt Lake City run track.

The Washington Blade has a brief analysis by Chris Johnson
on the 10th Circuit’s possibilities here.

I recall meeting with the late Steve Snyder from William and
Mary GALA around 2006 about Marshall-Newman, which may soon come under legal
challenge in Virginia, as some cases are building, as reported by the
Blade. I’ll come back to these cases
later.

The Post story referred to “mormonsandgays” with a
discussion of the Church’s more updated teaching that sexual orientation itself
could be immutable, but acting on homosexual interest is a sin. That would beg
the question, why should some people be singled out for such a personal
sacrifice? Yet, religion often stresses
that different people are called upon to make varied and seemingly unjust
sacrifices for the welfare of the group (the Vatican says that). A year or so ago, ABC Nightline covered a
Mormon family where the husband had told his wife he was gay but the wife
honored his willingness to “sacrifice” is deepest sexual or personal longings
for God. That’s a challenging view of
morality. The major group for gay Mormons is “Affirmation”. (There is a site called “gays and Mormons”
that sends back “Come back soon”).

Sunday, December 22, 2013

I did indeed find the reported anti-gay and apparent racist
comments by “Duck Dynasty” Phil Robertson shocking. I do understand the free speech arguments, as
well as A-and-E’s right as a private entity to make and enforce a contract with
its producers.

The problem is that speech like this sometimes incites
others into criminal activity. I have to
say that even as I believe in the concept of “personal responsibility”. Although not likely, someone like me could
someday be on the receiving end of an act like that, and it could be over for
me. There is a point where something
like this becomes a threat.

It’s noteworthy that Cracker Barrel, once notorious for its
own anti-gay employment policies from the early 1990s, pulled Duck’s products
from its “Ole Country Store” businesses that dot our interstates. (Note: More recent reports late Sunday indicate that Cracker Barrel reversed itself and restored the products.)

More important, is to ask where Robertson’s ideas come
from? God? Scripture? Is he motivated by the need to feel superior
to someone (me) and enforce his domination?
Is he motivated by the idea that whatever is different becomes a
potential enemy? Probably this is all
true. Is he motivated by some train of
thought? That gets more troubling. Maybe he believes every adult should share in
the responsibility of raising the next generation. Maybe he thinks that someone
less competitive physically (like me) “gets out of things” and depends on
others to sacrifice and take risks for him.
Maybe he would see my own “Calvinistic” attitude toward forming
attachments toward others (within a family-centered context) as morally
problematic, although I doubt his thinking gets this refined. (See main blog, Dec. 15). In any case, it’s hard to see what his “thinking”
would add up to as anything logically meaningful.

On another matter: Last
night was an unusually mild evening for Christmas season. The Town crowd seemed a little smaller than
usual but was vigorous. The disco did not decorate for Christmas, but the drag
queens dressed up as Santa and then as Christmas trees.

I wonder if all the real estate construction nearby (next to
the 930 Club) means anything. I hadn’t
paid attention to it before.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

President Obama has named Billie Jean King, the former
tennis champion, to the official delegation to the US Olympics, putting Russia’s
recent anti-gay “propaganda” law on the spotlight. The San Francisco Chronicle has a typical
story here. Obama mentioned gay athletes of great character, and included Brian Boitano, former figure-skating champion, who gets mentioned in the 1999 animated film of "South Park". (So does "Big Gay Al").

The San Francisco story reports that even “gay tourists”
could be arrested under the law, which might include people who have visible
public blogs, like me. Putin has
promised that visitors to the Olympics will not be harassed. What does that mean?

In other news, federal courts in both New Mexico and Utah
have struck down anti gay-marriage bans, and in Utah there is a sudden rush for
gay partners to marry before the decision can be stayed.

I've covered the most recent developments about anti-gay laws in Uganda and India on my International blog today.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Today, I visited the National Archives in Washington DC,
specifically to see the David M. Rubenstein Gallery and the Records of Rights.

There was an interactive panel, set up in the manner of a
tablet computer, near the entrance to the exhibit that covered many areas of
individual rights, including rights to privacy and sexuality. The pamphlet from the Archives calls this 17-foot exhibit "A Place at the Table".

The exhibit gives sobering history of the rights of LGBT people,
or to the fundamental right to adult sexual privacy. The idea is introduced with the banner "We the (Straight) People." It notes that right after World War II, panic
over the “Red Scare” set in, and theories developed that homosexuals were
morally or psychologically weak and therefore security risks. It notes that President Eisenhower signed an
executive order banning gays from federal employment in 1953, on the basis of
sexual orientation alone, without reference to conduct (foreshadowing the
debate on the military ban forty years later).

The exhibit shows two immigration cases, Qurioz v. Neely
(1961), in which Quiroz lost a court case in which she could deported as a
lesbian for a “psychopathic personality”.
The Supreme Court upheld a similar view in 1967 in Boutilier v. INS. Check
the Record of Rights link here. The link for Boutilier is here. See a discussion at the University of
Richmond here. If courts were agreeing with shallow notions of homosexuality as "psychopathic", my 1961 expulsion from William and Mary becomes more understanable.

The exhibit also detailed Bowers v. Hardwick (1986) and Lawrence v. Texas (2003), emphasizing the idea of self-ownership in the Texas decision/

The Records of Rights also has a poster on the Cuban Refugee incident in 1980, and the "political fallout" when it became known that a large percentage of the refugees were said to be homosexual.

Photography is not permitted at the exhibit, but all the
major documents from the Rubenstein collection seem to be online.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

“Jonathan & Dwayne: A Story About Love” is a ten minute
short film on Vimeo about a military couple which proposed marriage at the San
Diego Pride parade and who walked in uniform (one partner is in the Navy and is
in whites) in the parade. The couple is Jonathan and Dwayne Beebie-Franqui.

The video was shot March 30, 2013 and is produced by
Momentus Films, with Vimeo link here (not emebedable).

The short film is important because until the repeal of “don’t
ask, don’t tell” servicemembers couldn’t march in gay parades in uniforms.

Yahoo has an account of the Uniformed Military March (July
21, 2012) here and Politico has a similar story here.

The 1993 “don’t ask don’t tell” law had actually mentioned
gay marriage as creating a presumption of homosexual conduct, even though no
state recognized it at the time.

Monday, December 16, 2013

On Sunday, the New York Times reported, on p A19, the
federal judge Clark Waddoups in Utah had invalidated part of a Utah law banning
polygamy, specifically language regarding “cohabitation” on due process and
First Amendment grounds. He left in
place the parts banning legal recognition of polygamous marriage. The story is
by John Schwartz.

The ruling (link)
referred to the Lawrence v. Texas sodomy law decision in 2003, particularly
Kennedy’s reported language on personal autonomy or self-ownership. The ruling would seem to discredit the idea
that accepting gay marriage would lead to legal recognition of polygamy. The
ruling seemed also to answer Scalia’s dissent in the 2003 opinion.

On Anderson Cooper's AC360, a spokesperson for young women who were victimized by Warren Jeffs and the FLDS said that this decision doesn't recognize the deliberate abuse of women and mockery of their ability to "consent".

On a personal note, I visited the club “Legends” in Raleigh,
NC Sunday night (Dec. 15) while traveling.
The crowd as moderate, but there were some very attractive dancers, and
some contact seemed to be allowed. (It
is not allowed in Washington DC but was in Minnesota when I lived there;
however photography of dancing models was not allowed in Minnesota).

I also drove past the St. Johns Metropolitan Community
Church, between downtown and Fletcher Park in Raleigh. I had attended a service
there in July 1994 after a very personal soliloquy in the park. I still remember that particular Sunday
morning, about the time of my 51st birthday.

Friday, December 13, 2013

During the height of medical coverage of AIDS in the 1980s
and early 1990s, Kaposi’s Sarcoma as often the first “opportunistic disease”
presented by MSM confirming a diagnosis of “full blown AIDS”. Over time, KS gradually became less frequent
as a presenting symptom, and today is no longer widely discussed.

What’s interesting now is that Wikipedia flatly notes that
KS lesions are caused directly by a herpes virus, type 8. (An early theory in the 1980s had been
poppers.) The increase in use of condoms
among MSM would have been effective in preventing or reducing transmission of both
HIV and of HHV8, explaining the gradual decline of KS in gay men. It is likely that KS in elderly Jewish men in
some parts of Russia is also related to HHV8.
KS is usually “multifocal”, originating repeatedly rather than
metastasizing. But it can become
destructive and rapidly fatal when it forms in the lungs or GI tract.

The HHV8 virus can also cause one form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma
more common with AIDS, and it may be more “effective” in producing lymphoma
when Epstein-Barr virus, a similar herpes virus, is present.

At one time, the idea that viruses directly cause cancer was seen as speculative. But by 1983, a viruses related to HIV called HTLV-1 had caused a T-cell leukemia in Asia, with opportunistic infections often similar to those of AIDS.

It’s curious that in the late 1970s, clusters of Hodgkins
Disease were reported in some areas of the country, especially the Northeast,
and that speculation of association with EBV was mentioned then. All of this a few years before HIV exploded
in the MSM community. All very
interesting. The most important Wikipedia article is here. HHV8 is apparently rather ubiquitous, and
harmless until someone is immunocompromised

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Last night, after dinner at KammerBooks on Dupont Circle –
this bookstore has to serve the function of Lambda Rising, which closed at the
end of 2009, but it’s still going strong -- I walked down P Street toward the
West End Cinema and poked my head in to the Fireplace Bar out of
curiosity. It has been at the corner of
23rd and P for decades and I don’t go there often.

I saw a no photography sign at the entrance. I don’t think I can recall seeing such a sign
in a bar before. The website doesn’t mention
such a policy.

However, I recall seeing a “no cell phone use” sign at the
Eagle. That may be the point of such a
sign. In New York City, at the Black
Party in March 2012, I overheard announcers on the street telling attendees
that they would have to turn in cell phones, as I walked past and went to a “free”
party at the Therapy nearby in Hells Kitchen. In 2011, in a popular bar and dance floor in
Minneapolis called the Saloon, I noticed a no photography sign that appeared to
apply only to the dancers in a wet stall.
It was interesting, though, that the dance floor was always enshrouded
in artificial fog. In Dallas, at a bar called Suellen's (on the Cedar Springs strip, in 2011), there is a sign warning about uncivil behavior, but I don't recall that it mentioned photography (which could hardly work because the place often has small rock and jazz concerts in place of a dance floor, next door at the Station 4).

Photography has long been common at drag shows. There is a general courtesy that people
consent to appearing in “group” pictures taken in bars. There is sometimes a belief that it you dance
or show off on an elevated stage in a disco, or somehow deliberately attract
attention you can expect to be noticed and photographed. People in costumes expect to wind up in
social media. But since about mid 2011
or so, people have become more sensitive to simply appearing in random or
targeted photos from strangers, probably because of increasing concerns over
online reputation and possible tagging of photos in social media. For several years before 2011, there seemed
to be little concern over photo courtesy. That’s a little bit ironic, in fact,
when you remember that the official repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” for
military members occurred in 2011.

The sign at the entry of the Fireplace may be a throwback to
the 1950’s, when people feared showing up in newspapers. I “came of age” publicly in 1973, after the
worst was over; but when I lived in Dallas, raids on bars to nab people
occurred as late as 1980.

The area around 23rd and P doesn’t seem as
popular for clubs (the “Pop Stop” is there), with the loss of the Omega and
Apex; activity seems to move East, toward U Street.

One other note about Kammerbooks. I bought a couple of policy books, and noticed with some glee a book called "An Unofficial Dictionary of Snark"

Sunday, December 08, 2013

The New York Times Review section today has an interesting
perspective by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, “How many American men are gay?, link
here. He gives us a US map showing relative level
acceptance of homosexuality. The lowest levels consistently apply from Texas to
the Carolinas (Florida is better; maybe they got over Anita Bryant). The most “tolerant” (or “accepting”) is Rhode
Island; the least is Mississippi. Rhode
Island shows a 5.5 times a rate of male high school students identifying
themselves as gay than does Mississippi on Facebook. But in Mississippi 50%
more wives search for “Is my husband gay?”
The writer points out that high school students and many others are not
mobile enough to live in a more accepting area.

Again, we beg the question, where does (and did) intolerance
really come from? Why would a man be
more intolerant of another man who will probably never have children but also
never be a romantic rival for his wife?
I think the unpredictability or capriciousness of luck ultimately has
something to do with it.

The best answer for the question posed by the article seems to be about 5%.

Last night, I briefly visited the Cobalt (after leaving the
Kennedy Center) and found the Rumba Latina party going on. The Town may take a lot of the “usual” crowd
(last night there was to be another running of the “Crack” show). I’ve
never been one to find too much interest in a theme based on a specific ethnicity,
although in large cities in more liberal states, “minority” cultures are more
accepting of homosexuality than in the past;
nevertheless, the theme doesn’t really affect the crowd much. Likewise, country and western (Remingtons)
doesn’t impress me too much – although it plays big in Dallas (the
Roundup). Downstairs (last night) the
music sometimes shifted back to more ordinary fare. Why not have more 80s music nights?

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Impoverished black and Hispanic men are accounting for
25-45% of new HIV infections in gay men (or MSM) in most cities, but up to 80%
in men under 25. Even so, white men may
be more likely to engage in risky behaviors.
All of this is in a New York Times story today by Donald G. McNeil, MD,
link here.

This may help explain why, socially, in many circles younger
white men or affluent men of any race are not hearing much about new HIV cases
in their social circles the way we did in the 1980s, when I was living in
Dallas.

It also has a huge impact on the nature of the volunteer
work that goes on, at Whitman Walker and Food and Friends, which has probably
come to demand much more refined social skills than it used to a couple decades
ago.

On the other hand, the public concerns of gay men living in
college campuses have shifted away from AIDS itself to the same problems
everyone else faces. Today, certain
forms of bacterial meningitis, which could lead to amputations in the most
gruesome cases, have attracted great concern, to the point that the CDC has to
consider using an unapproved European vaccine for one of the deadlier strains. Students living in dormitories should
consider vaccination, and the FDA should consider approval of the new Type B
vaccine immediately. Health officials
should address the usefulness of the vaccine for HIV-infected and possibly
immunocomrpomised students.

On another matter, CNN sources are commenting on how Nelson
Mandela, who passed away today, stoop up for LGBT people, which was
unprecedented in South Africa. The
Metropolitan Communitty Church of Dallas in 1980 hired Joan Wakeford as a
pastor from South Africa, when I was living there, at a time when things were
very bad. I remember seeing Richard
Attenborough’s “Cry Freedom” (Universal) with a boyfriend at Northpark in Dallas in 1987 –
a film made well before Mandela’s release, about a journalist who has to escape
from the country to get a book published about a black prisoner who dies in
police custody. Ted Koppel talked about
South African on Nightline all the time in those days.

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

More Olympic and potentially professional male athletes are
announcing that they are gay publicly, according to a big article by Adam
Sherwin in the British news site “Independent” with a story about track
medalist Tom Daley, link here.

Other stars are rugby player Gareth Thomas, former
Washington Wizards NBA star Jason Collins (who has not found a team), cricket
player Stephen Davies, United football player Robbie Rogers, and skater John
Curry.

Yup, we wait to hear about this in some US sports, like
hockey and Major League Baseball. The
major league franchisers are all coming on board with non-discrimination
policies. Think Progress has a big story July 16, 2013 here (MLB's own link is here). Inevitably, we will hear more announcements, especially in the US. There are some gifted men who did not go into sports because of an implicit "ban" in the past. But years ago, Dave Kopay wrote a book about being gay (and in the closet) in the NFL.

I did get an email press release about Daley
from Sport Lobster, and there's blog post of the release here.

Sunday, December 01, 2013

Lead Washington Blade reporter Chris Johnson has a front
page story on the Black Friday edition of the Blade, “How goes transition to
open military service? Don’t ask”, linkhere.

The focus of the article is overwhelmingly about equal
benefits for military and veteran families of same-sex couples. There are problems with some states’ national
guard units (although Texas has finally agreed to start processing the
benefits) because of state constitutions and a disagreement over “federalism”. There are real problems with veterans not
married in states recognizing marriage.

There seem to be no tensions at all in the units being reported, despite all the predictions about "privacy" and "unit cohesion" made when the debate started in 1993. There was, however, an odd issue with a hire of an ex-gay advocate at the Air Force Academy.

It sound like pouring ice water, but can the really
astounding progress in the military issue since 2009 (which started slowly but
whipped up late in 2010 with the repeal law, and the official recognition in
September 2011) be undone if the Democratic Party tanks badly in 2014 and 2016
over the Obamacare rollout and actuarial fiasco?

Seriously, it (Obamacare) may indeed get better quickly on
2014, and prices for “the healthy” but underemployed may well come down if the
insurance exchanges get their acts together.
But I do wonder if there is a real danger if the GOP winds up in full
control in 2016. It can be argued that
the nation’s finances might be more stable since the partisan bickering that
almost led to default would stop – but we can always have another 2008 or worse
anyway, or another national security debacle as we did with Bush.

Christie will probably be very moderate on gay issues and
not try to roll back military progress or on ENDA or marriage rights, for that
matter. He really does sound like
someone who wants to govern and do the job.
I worry about some other potential candidates, though (Cruz).

Last night, by the way, I just sat for a quiet evening of
Karaoke at Freddie’s in Arlington. Holiday
weekend crowd was good there, but I don’t know how it would have been “in town”.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

For the record, I wanted to note that I found an account of
a conference called “Operation: Do Ask, Do Tell” at Northeastern Illinois
University (NEIU) which was held Oct. 20, 2012 (not 2013, at least in this
account) in Chicago, to help LGBT veterans network, particular in areas of
employment and benefits. The link is
here. The school is said to be “military friendly”. The conference emphasized services for trangender veterans.

I recall a transgender Naval Intelligence agent appearing on Scott Peck's radio show in Washington DC in 1993; she was forced to leave the uniformed service but got the same job as a civilian employee.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

While driving in to a Thanksgiving service elsewhere this
morning, I happened to pass the Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church
on Nebraska Ave in far NW Washington DC, near Ward Circle and in the highest
parts of the city. I saw a sign with a
rainbow and the words “Stop the trials”.
These refer to “trials” within the Methodist denomination for performing
same-sex marriage or union ceremonies, or possibly regarding homosexual behavior
among clergy itself.

This church is protesting the behavior of its denomination,
which it says lags far behind society. Here is its explanation of “Stop the
Trials”, link.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Today, I attended a webcam sponsored by the Centers for
Disease Control, “Combatting a Resurgence of HIV Among Young Gay Men”. I was specifically invited by email and phone
call to the event, which I believe was held in New York City. The webcam said it was for “credentialed
journalists only”. The URL is here. If is offline right now, but CDC says it will
release a video.

The host was Thomas Roberts of MSNBC. The panelists were Jeff Krehely of the Human
Rights Campaign, Carl Siciliano (who works with homeless LGBT youth – the last
name sounds like a chess opening), Daniel Driffin (from an African-American
group) and Dr. Jonathan Mirmin from the CDC.

The session lasted 85 minutes. Toward the end, Mike Lavers
of the Washington Blade asked if gay men could face an HIV-free future some
day, and Mirmin said that this would be an “aspiration”.

CDC’s fact sheets for MSM, broken down in various
categories, are here.

HIV rates are increasing among gay men, especially under 25,
but the rates seem to be increasing more rapidly among African Americans, and
especially among the homeless or among those who were kicked out by their
parents. Siciliano gave an anecdote of a
trans-gendered homeless person living with a man who expected unprotected sex in
return for a place to live.

Siciliano mentioned the Campaign for Youth Shelter and the
Ali Forney Center.

When I lived in Dallas (1979=1988), there was an attempt to
set up a “Safe Place” for homeless LGBT people, and some people at MCC Dallas
did help organize the effort around 1980s with founders shares. The idea came up after there was a request
for shelter for LGBT refugees from Cuba in 1980. Not very many people were prepared to offer
them shelter, and some of the groups organizing the efforts seemed unaware of
the sacrifice that could be required to house them. This is a difficult cause to embrace from a
personal perspective. But poverty among LGBT youth after expulsion by parents seems to be a public health problem of its own. The panel noted that rates of family rejection had actually increased in some states after they passed laws accepting gay marriage; it seems to have increased in rural parts of upstate New York. There was a suggestion that increase in equality in the law in middle and upper class communities has increased tensions in some lower income communities.

It would be obvious that the politics and effectiveness of
the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) could affect the
medication of low-income MSM when they are infected, but it’s also apparent that
the medications and protease inhibitors have become very effective, with much
fewer side effects today than in the past.

In my own social circles, I do not hear or learn of new
cases of HIV among men today very often.
But in the 1980s I learned of it all the time; it was like living
through a hurricane.

Update: Nov. 27

The New York Times has a story on a CDC report on the rise of unprotected anal sex among MSM, who often say they select only other men who say they are negative, link here. The CDC's Morbidity report Nov. 29 is here. I remember reading a lot of these in print in the 1980s.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Looking back over the years, one of the most significant
aspects of anti-gay “discrimination” as I experienced it, in my own unusual
path, seems to be that it was predicated more on what I didn’t do than on what
I did.

Many adverse impacts resulted from the fact that I did not
or would not perform acts (sexual intercourse with women) normally expected to
produce children. As an only child, I
would not provide my parents, married for 45 years, a lineage into the
future.

That means I would, throughout the decades when privacy and
being left alone were the issues (as well as public health), long before
equality became the buzzword of today, experience some symptoms of second-class
status, even though I often didn’t notice them.
Being single meant paying higher car insurance premiums, for example.

But being single also usually meant more discretionary
income, and lower expenses, despite higher tax rates (the most obvious penalty
for heterosexual “virginity”). True, I paid
real estate taxes to support schools for kids I did not have – but I didn’t
object; education was important, and eventually the school systems would become
an employer. I paid health insurance
premiums for maternity care I could not use (a preview of today’s debate over
aspects of mandatory insurance under Obamacare) but employers paid most of the
premium so I didn’t notice it. Family
coverage was much more expensive out-of-pocket that single coverage in most
employer group plans.

Where I did notice it toward the end of my career was
sometimes doing other people’s work (on salary, without more compensation),
especially on call, when they were out for family reasons. There may be social benefits to mandatory
paid maternity and paternity leave (in addition to vacation) as is common in
Europe, but that penalizes those who don’t marry and have children – indeed penalizes
them for “inaction”.

Then, there was the issue of eldercare. “Family responsibility” wasn’t always predicated
on having children.

So while there is a great deal of attention to equal
treatment of same-sex spouses (and of the children of same-sex couples), “equality”
really has always owned a much bigger context than that. It’s not a nice
feeling to be viewed as someone else’s insurance policy, or to “work for a
discount” – although it also means being less likely to be laid off. Lowballing was the underside of fighting discrimination
in the old days.

One other note: ENDA is said to have passed the Senate with a bigger margin than did the repeal of DADT, with more GOP support. But the House seems unlikely to move. Boehner is not known for courage in being willing to break the Hastert Rule (which isn't even legally binding anyway).

Monday, November 11, 2013

At least six states are resisting pressures to recognize
same-sex marriage for benefits for National Guard members, according to a story
Monday by Richard A. Oppel, Jr. on p. A12 Monday, November 11, 2013, Veterans
Day. The states are Texas, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi, Oklahoma and West Virginia.
National Guard troops can be federalized and deployed (they could even
go on relief missions in the Philippines now) but these states insist that
Guard units are state agencies, and state laws must be followed. In Texas, same-sex spouses can go to a
federal installation (Ft. Hood) for identification cards. The link for the story is here.

It would appear that in these cases, the couples would have had to get married previously in states that do recognize gay marriage.

In the early and mid 1990s, Margarethe Cammermeyer was one
of the leaders in lifting the military ban and then the DADT policy, and she
had been a colonel with the Washington State National Guard.

Grand performed on a Moze electronic piano and sang
downstairs starting at about 11:30 PM, after the drag show, and emphasized mostly
1970s songs. He then performed on the
stage upstairs at about 12:30 AM. There
were some technical difficulties upstairs.

One of the songs was “Stay with me:” I recall a song from
around 1973 called “Dancing in the Moonlight”, which has nothing to do with
Reid Ewing’s “In the Moonlight (Do Me”) for “Modern Family”.

Afterwards, we got to meet him in person.

There was also a birthday cake on the downstairs stage. Was this Steve’s birthday? Curiously, Nov. 7 was “Reid Rainbow’s” birthday
(25, car rental age) according to Wikipedia.
All Scorpio.

The crowd was as dense as ever, since the event had some
publicity. It built up very quickly.

Because of the expected crowd, I used Metro. When leaving, around 1:15 AM, I still found
it impossible to find a cab in the area, despite DC’s recent change to forcing
cabs to mark themselves as “for hire” or “on call”.

Saturday, November 09, 2013

Back in the 1990s, the public perception was that the gay
marriage “battle” had started in Hawii, where it percolated for a while, after
Baehr and Dancel won a ruling from the state supreme court in 1993. Erik
Eckholm has a story about the progress in Hawaii, about to reconsider
legalization now, on p. A11 of the Saturday New York Times here.

Somehow, a line about “getting married” showed up in the
1965 movie musical “Hawaii” on Michner’s
novel. Yet, early Hawaiian culture
accepted some homosexuality and did not have a well developed institution of
marriage.

The Hawaii case is said to have motivated the passage of
DOMA in 1996.

The Illinois gay marriage bill will be signed Nov. 20,
Huffington story here.

Thursday, November 07, 2013

The New York Times is reporting this morning that the
Republican Party wants to consider relying more on primaries and less on state
conventions to pick US Senate and gubernatorial candidates, hoping to find more
moderate and electable (and less abrasive) candidates. The story is by Jeremy Peters and Jonathan
Martin, here. It’s important to the LGBT voter because of the reported anti-gay attitudes of
Cuccunelli and particularly the lieutenant governor candidate E. W. Jackson,
who compared Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and LGBT people to “pedophiles”.

Richard Sincere (from Gays and Lesbians for Individual
Liberty) had written a piece about Jackson’s comments claiming that gays and
lesbians have an “authorian, totalitarian spirit”, with the story about the
article (to appear in a Fredericksburg paper) here. It sounds as though Jackson thinks that
anyone who supports something like universal health care is “authoritarian” or
communist. But the comment could have
been motivated by something darker, the notion that “body fascism” seen in the
attitude of some men in personal relationships (and an avoidance of
complementarity) comports with an idea of wanting to see one’s own idea of
virtue everywhere, a curious flip side of cultural fundamentalism.

Just this week, with Christie’s big win in New Jersey, it
seems as if the GOP leadership may indeed go to war with its own ideological
extremes. Cruz could become a footnote. Will both parties give up the gerrymandering
that tends to put ideologically extreme candidates on tickets? Even the credit rating agencies have talked
about this.

Oh, don’t forget the ENDA vote that may happen in the Senate
today.

Picture: Bizarre sky cloud color at dawn, as if on a Red Dwarf star planet.

Wednesday, November 06, 2013

The Family Equality Council has prepared a YouTube video
about same-sex couples who adopt children, called “The Call”. There is also a
campaign by “Allies for Adoption” to encourage LGBT couples to adopt foster
children, to relieve a foster care crisis. The group says that there are
400,000 children in foster care in the US, among whom 100,000 are eligible for
adoption and 23,000 might age out. The
press release (sent to my AOL email) says that same-sex couples who are raising children are four
times as likely to have adopted children as heterosexual couples and six times
as likely to have foster children.

The group says that only 6 states ban sexual-orientation discrimination in foster care, and only 19 (plus Washington DC) permit same-sex couples to adopt jointly and 13 allow second parents to join as adoptive parents.

It’s a little hard to find a concrete link for the report on
the group’s website, here. It has a flashy campaign to sign up volunteers,
and seems to be a survey or petition and then asks for information.

Monday, November 04, 2013

The proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA,
cleared a cloture vote today (Monday, November 4, 2013) 61-30, clearing the way
for almost certain passage later this week. The Huffington Post has a story and video here.

There are multiple proposed amendments to exclude religious
organizations from being covered, including one by Toomey. This gets to be sensitive in areas where
churches are affiliated with large private universities or hospitals viewed as
prominent in the community and as employers that should be diverse.

In my thinking, ending “don’t ask, don’t tell” for the
uniformed military in 2011 makes ENDA easier to pass. I recall seeing ENDA proposed in the spring of 1993.

Update: Nov. 7

Senate will vote around 2 PM Thursday Nov. 7.

WJLA mentions that there is a military exception as well as religious. Is this correct? Why would there be a military exemption with DADT repealed? Others are writing that exemptions don't exist with other laws (like for race -- religions sometimes). Disparate impact is not supposed to be considered.

Sunday, November 03, 2013

Here we go again. Do
the minimum requirements for individual policies in Obamacare force some
individuals to “sacrifice” to pay for the problems of others? Isn’t that a sore point and something a lot
of us have a bone to pick with? The New York Times weighs in on Sunday morning November
3, 2013 with an editorial (p. 10, Review), on the problems of policies not
being renewed after Dec. 31, “Policies not worth keeping: Planes with
inadequate coverage will be canceled, but consumers won’t be left out in the
cold”, link here.

OK, a relatively young single adult might face some
issues. Suppose I “imagine myself naked”
at age 30 or so (much more pleasant than now at 70). I could, as a gay male, resent paying for a
woman’s maternity or pregnancy. If I
were a married man, I would feel it’s in my interest to share coverage.
Although I escaped exposure to HIV (apparently), I certainly welcome coverage
for it. I don’t mind paying property
taxes that largely go toward supporting public school systems, but after all, I
got a public education myself and the school system was my major employer in
the previous decade, so paying for someone else’s childbearing expenses might
not seem so out of line by comparison.
And it probably doesn’t add much.

What about paying for mental health and substance abuse
problems> I do resent the drug
addiction problem coverage. On the
mental health, I had a spate of psychiatric intervention myself as a young
adult. It arguably was the result of
other people’s wrongdoing, but that is partly what insurance is for – to pay
for harm done to you by others. Auto insurance,
for example, is often like that.

An interesting question arises if I had to pay for even more
extended family benefits, which happens in Europe with mandatory paid family
leave for parents (most of all in Sweden).
Population demographics and low birth rates in some populations helps
explain the practice. Yet, it’s not seen
as that controversial over there. It’s
true that recognition of gay marriage and gay parents makes this more equitable
now, and also sends a message that participation in raising the next generation
ought to be expected.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

I haven’t become delinquent in following the news. I know
that there was hearing in a federal court in Harrisonburg, VA Wednesday to
determine whether a lawsuit challenging Virginia’s Marshall-Newman amendment
could be set up as a class action suit for all same-sex couples in Virginia.

On the “heels” of the 17th Street “High Heels
Race”, the bars had their formal Halloween parties tonight (the third in a
week). I peaked in on Cobalt, but didn’t
stay for the midnight costume contest because of Metro weeknight
schedules.

There was a small guy who had replaced his entire exterior with
the painted spots of a cheetah. It
interesting to revere cats so much as to want to become a cat, although cats
usually keep more body hair than we do.
That’s all right, a guy on the NBC Today show this morning had chest fur
glued on, which will prove as destructive as having tattoos.

The rest of the costumes were less extreme than last weekend
at Town. Some were sports oriented,
especially kickball (even more so at JR’s).
Some were collegiate. You can put
on the costume of a GWU graduate student, or medical student.

Tonight, Jimmy Kimmel is in drag on ABC. So was Billy Bush today on Access
Hollywood. Curiously, on “Days of our
Lives”, Will and Sonny still look and act like men, even on Halloween.

I wonder what the Abbey in West Hollywood will be like
tonight.

Oh, by the way, pumpkins are orange. I learned that in kindergarten. It’s still true on the DC Metro.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Tonight the community held the 27th annual High
Heels Race on 17th St. in Washington DC, between the Cobalt Dc and
JR’s.

For about two hours, the drag queens in costume milled
around in the street, which could not even be crossed in the middle. At 9 PM sharp, the ladies of the night raced
down the street to the finish line. The crowd followed, rather like a Spanish
procession on an Antnony Bourdain Parts Unknown.

The restaurants were all packed and could not even be
entered. The only places left to eat
were a Submarine shop and a McDonald’s.

There were plenty of dopplegangers for the Carrie girl, who
all looked a bit alike. But the rest of the costumes seemed almost ceremonial,
Catholic, Orthodox, something you see on the continent. I was struck by the
number of men in the crowd who were as tall as the ladies with just loafers on.

Major media outlets were in evidence, with fully equipped trucks from the local television stations. WJLA reported that the attendance was at least 10,000 to probably 15,000.

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